


Billy Vangelis's Boy

by pleasekalemenow



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: A Series of Scenes, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Backstory, Cigarettes, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, am I taking liberties? sure, and that being snatched away from him is what made him snap, and then carmilla broke what remained, but I like the idea that Jonny had a bright future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-07
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23530261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasekalemenow/pseuds/pleasekalemenow
Summary: “You know why the sand’s red round here, don’t you, Jonny?”Jonny sighed, not sparing a glance at his father as the man rambled. He got like this sometimes, when his flask was near-empty and he’d been staring into the fireplace too long. Still, even if he knew where this rant was going, it would be worse if he didn’t play along.“Why?”“Because,” his father slurred, “the machines that keep this town runnin’ are oiled with blood. Good blood, bad blood, don’t really matter at the end of things, just matters that the gears keep grinding. When it’s done flowin’ through, it soaks into the earth. Stains it. They’ll grind you up, Jonny, if ya let ‘em, crush your bones, and your blood will trickle through the cogs to keep ‘er singin’.”---A series of glimmers into the truth behind "One Eyed Jacks."
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville & Billy Vangelis, Jonny d'Ville & One Eyed Jack
Comments: 32
Kudos: 126
Collections: Stowaways' Shenanigans





	Billy Vangelis's Boy

“You know why the sand’s red round here, don’t you, Jonny?”

Jonny sighed, not sparing a glance at his father as the man rambled. He got like this sometimes, when his flask was near-empty and he’d been staring into the fireplace too long. Still, even if he knew where this rant was going, it would be worse if he didn’t play along. 

“Why?”

“Because,” his father slurred, “the machines that keep this town runnin’ are oiled with blood. Good blood, bad blood, don’t really matter at the end of things, just matters that the gears keep grinding. When it’s done flowin’ through, it soaks into the earth. Stains it. They’ll grind you up, Jonny, if ya let ‘em, crush your bones, and your blood will trickle through the cogs to keep ‘er singin’.”

Billy Vangelis was nothing if not predictable, and once he got into his rhythm, Jonny quietly mouthed the words to this rehearsed rant along with him. He’d been going off with the same damn analogy since  _ years _ before Jonny announced he wanted to get into politics, but ever since he told him, the rants had gotten ever more frequent. 

“Then I won’t  _ let _ it,” he spat out, too loudly to pretend he hadn’t. 

His father was on him in an instant, clearing the space between the sitting area and the dining table with speed that was damn spooky on a drunk man. His grip cut into Jonny’s arm, making him since, but Billy took no mind, shaking his head frantically before even speaking. “You can’t imagine the threats that will come at you, Jonny, you’re  _ sixteen _ . Don’t matter the confidence you have, the skill, they have steel and words and they’ll cut you with whichever you’re least ready for.”

“Get the hell off me!” Jonny shoved him off, scrambling to his feet as if this behavior came as any real surprise. Billy just slumped forward, muttering incoherently to himself as he leaned on the chair in a position that Jonny knew would almost certainly leave him aching in the morning. 

He left him there and went to bed. Wasn’t his fucking problem. 

—-

Jonny took a long drag from a cigar that he really didn’t see the appeal of, but was expensive as fuck, and so would have been rude to turn down. The cards in front of him were damn good—a jack on the table, and in his hand two queens. There were still two more cards to be flipped over, but Jonny has a good feeling. He smirked around the Belvedere between his lips and blew out some smoke, upping the ante by double. 

“Don’t waste your time on this one, boys, I’ve got this round.” He made eye contact with Jack. Well, halfway. There were other players at this table, sure, but none of them mattered. Not really. One-Eyed Jack was well aware of this fact, and he just watched Jonny with the same neutral smile he always did as the two people between them folded. He matched. 

“Don’t think I’ve ever been called ‘boy’ by someone young as you, Vangelis.” His eyes narrowed a bit, but his smile didn’t falter. “Don’t know if I much care for it.”

“What’s the matter, Jack, afraid of some young blood stepping up around here?” Jonny tried to keep his voice light and joking, but Jack wasn’t fooled, of course. He assumed the bastard invited him to his casino to intimidate him or something of the sort, but Jonny wasn’t a child. He was 18. Young for a mayoral candidate, sure, but he’d been hot on the campaign trail for over a year now and no one had managed to cow him yet. Not for lack of trying, of course. 

“On the contrary!” The next card was flipped over—a jack—but Jack didn’t even glance at it that Jonny could see. “I do appreciate fresh blood. It’s always fun, leaning new tells, watching you fumble as you learn how things are done.” The smile widened. “After all, New Texas holdem takes time to master.”

Jonny stared him down, trying to pour malice into his painted smile. Another person folded. One person stood. Jonny raised the ante again, looking Jack dead in the eye. He just matched it. The other person folded.

“Just us two  _ hot shots _ now, eh, Jonny?” His smile was really starting to grate on him, but the next card was played and it was...another jack. Improbable, but maybe the next card would be a queen and he’d have a full house. 

He took another long, slow drag of smoke as he deliberately upped the ante off the bat. “Certainly seems that way, Jack.”

“You know, Jonny, you’re fun to play with.” He matched without batting an eye. “It’s been interesting watching you work. It’s a shame this will be over soon.”

Another. Fucking. Jack. Still, the result was the same; full house for Jonny. He let out a one-beat chuckle. “You reckon so?”

“I  _ know _ so. You’re flashpaper, Jonny; you might burn bright, but you ain't got nothin’ much to burn. You don’t stand a chance.” The smile, which had briefly dropped, was back now in full swing. “Poker isn’t a game for the faint of heart, after all.”

He dropped another few chips in the center. “You might just be surprised.”

“A surprise? From you?” He matched the bet one last time, laughing at nothing. “That  _ would _ be a surprise.”

With a huff, Jonny flipped over his cards. “Full house,  _ Jack _ .”

“Hm.” Jack looked at the hand he’d just laid down thoughtfully for a moment. “Guess you have a bit more going for you than I thought, Jonny.” Then he revealed his own hand, and Jonny’s heart sank. “Still not enough to save ya, I’m afraid.” 

In his hand was the last jack and a suicide king. Four of a kind, in theory, but suicide kings were wild, so really it was more like five. 

Jonny opened his mouth. Closed it. “Well.”

“You can settle up at the counter, Jonny. Or put it on your daddy’s tab.” His grin was more of a snarl, really, and Jonny wanted to smack it off his stupid face. If he swans with his left hook he probably wouldn’t even see it coming. But he stood up, walking away without even bothering to collect his chips, which seemed like a special sort of rude to Jonny. “Best of luck with your campaign,  _ boy _ .”

Jonny settled up at the door. He hadn’t spent money he didn’t have—he knew the dangers of  _ that _ all too well. Still, he didn’t think he’d be gambling again if he could help it. 

—-

“Jonny!” Jack’s voice carried from across the casino. He was seated at his usual place around the holdem table, dressed to the nines as if celebrating. His vest could have been stitched from gold and the raw gem of his bolo tie glinted even from this distance. Jonny wanted to tighten it around his throat until his eye bulged and his false one popped out to roll on the ground. He plastered on a smile and walked over to him. “Come on, boy, sit down, have a cigar. Here, we’ll deal you in.”

“I think I’ll just watch, thanks.” Jonny did take the cigar when offered, already lit for him, his choice already made, but he remained standing, rebelling in the small way he could. He took a deep drag and savored the way it choked him, the way his lungs burned for relief. He managed to keep his chest from stuttering with the effort to cough.

“Not much in a gambling mood, eh, Jonny?” Jack’s eye glimmered with mirth, and his false one glimmered with precious stones. It couldn’t be comfortable. Jonny wanted to tear it out of its socket.

He forced a laugh. “You know, I don’t think Lady Luck is much taken with me these days.”

“Luck’s a salacious whore, Jonathan, and I’m afraid I’m her pimp.” Jack’s tongue slipped out to moisten his lips. “But I think you’re looking at this whole thing all wrong.”

Another drag, and a slow exhale. He grit his teeth. “How so.” 

“Your campaign ending is an  _ opportunity _ , my boy. I like your fire. You’re strapped for cash--I have some jobs that might help.”

“What, you want to be  _ my _ pimp, too?” He snarled around the joke.

Jack laughed sincerely and Jonny wanted to tear out his voice box. “You and I both know you couldn’t make a living like that, Jonny.”

“Did you bring me here just to gloat and insult me? Because if so--”

“I know about your  _ indescretion _ , Jonny.”

He stiffened. “I’m certain I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He did. He couldn’t stop reliving it--some bookie in their house, a knife at his father’s throat, a frying pan in Jonny’s hand, some bookie on their floor, blood haloing around their head, seeping into the cracks in their hardwoods, his father sobbing, holding him, losing track of himself--

“Of course not, Jonny.” Jack’s face betrayed nothing, schooled by a lifetime of poker and blackmail. “As it happens, though, I’ve inherited the debts of your  _ indiscretion _ and quite a few of them belong to your daddy. So. If you’d like to sit down, maybe have a drink--I have a few jobs for you, and I trust you’ll do your best to complete them.” He chuckled. “I know your hands are already red.”

When he arrived at home that night, he was staggering, feeling a weight on his shoulders and a noose around his neck. His father was scrubbing the floor for the twelfth time in three days. He kicked over the soap bucket on his way to his room, but his father said nothing. He just stared at him with dead, guilty eyes.

—-

Jonny was sitting by the fireplace, turning his shiny new pistol over in his hands when his father stumbled in. He didn’t even bother to look, at first; just ran his thumbs over the polished steel and brass, thinking about what he’d done to get it. What he’d have to do with it.

“Jonny.” His father was slurring less than usual, which wasn’t a good sign. He wanted a damn cigarette. 

He still didn’t look up. “Thought I told you I didn’t want to hear your voice no more.”

“Jonny, it’s Jack.” At that, he turned around to see his father wringing his hands. Literally, he was wringing his hands--he thought people only did that in the campy romance novels he’d found among his mother’s things. “He...he wants to see you.”

“Let me guess.” He clicked the cylinder back into place. “You had another  _ off night _ .”

His father’s silence spoke volumes, and Jonny was just as quick as his daddy, and in a moment he was standing in front of him, pointing the pistol at his forehead.

“I should kill you right now. It’s because of you my life is over. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do, I’m so sorry.” He shook his head and Jonny glared at him. “You deserve a better daddy.”

“ _ No _ daddy would make a better one than you, you piece of shit.”

“You’re right.”

“You’re ruining my life.” He cocked the gun. It was empty, because he didn’t just walk around with a loaded gun, but his daddy didn’t know that. “I should do it, you know.”

Billy’s lower lip trembled as if he were on the verge of tears, but Jonny didn’t care. He reminded himself multiple times that he didn’t care. “I know, son.” He leaned against the catch, eyelids fluttering shut.

The gun was empty, but Jonny couldn’t make himself pull the trigger. He hated himself for that. The gun dropped to his side, and he walked past him towards the door, pulling a pack of smokes out of his pocket. He spit, “You’d be a goddamn waste of a bullet.”

When he was outside, he sat on the step, lighting up with shaky hands. He took too big a pull and ended up coughing smoke, but he just went back in for another even as his lungs screamed. Deep breath. He held the smoke in his lungs for as long as he could stand it before letting it out again in an even stream, and then he raised the pistol below his chin, pointing up, and pulled the trigger in an instant. It clicked harmlessly, and he dropped it to the ground beside him as he began to sob.

—-

Jonny wasn’t sure what he was expecting when Jack told him about this job. The man had been vague enough, he supposed; gave him a location, told him the target would be there when he arrived. That he’d be alone.

_ Don’t worry, no one real important, and no one who would be missed. You’ll barely even notice that they’re dead. _

The bastard had a sense of humor, if nothing else.

His father sat on a big rock overlooking the town, an unopened bottle of whiskey sitting beside him. The sand was hardly quiet as it shifted under Jonny’s feet, but Billy didn’t turn around.

“Lovely night, innit?”

Jonny was caught off-guard by the question, distracted by the weight of the loaded gun in his hand. “What?”

“Don’t reckon I came up here near enough. It’s a nice view.” He inhaled deeply, still not turning around.

Jonny took a shaky breath. “Do you know what’s about to happen?”

His father didn’t respond, just leaned forward, presumably to better admire the view. Jonny thought about saying a great deal of things;  _ how could you put me through this, why won’t you look at me, are you really going to just sit there and die? _

In the end, he said none of those things--just raised the mouth of his pistol to the place on Billy’s spine where his skull met his neck and pulled the trigger, and this time it went off. His father never answered the questions he didn’t ask, or offer any forgiveness or understanding, he just slumped forward and bled.

Jonny picked up the bottle beside him and cracked the seal, breathing in the smoke from his gun and holding it in his lungs until they burned.

—-

Jonny had his gun in his mouth when he first heard her voice.

“You know, if you’re hungry, there’s a saloon still open not far from here. Lead isn’t nearly as filling as you’d think.”

He turned to face the voice, gun still pressed against the back of his throat. He might have polished off the bottle of whiskey, but that had been hours ago, and he was cursed with a system that processed the stuff too quick to hit him quickly  _ or _ stick around. He  _ certainly _ wasn’t hallucination-drunk, but that didn’t leave him with many explanations for the woman he saw before him. Her clothes were ordinary enough, but something about her just seemed...off. He couldn’t put it into words, exactly, but she seemed entirely unfazed by what she’d just walked up on, and his confusion at that fact alone was enough to make him remove the gun from his mouth. “ _ What?” _

“I’m just saying, I’ve had my eye on you for a while, Jonny. You’re awfully bright to be turning your lights off like that.” She looked down at him with something between amusement and concern, and he wasn’t  _ nearly _ drunk enough for this.

“I’m sorry, have we met?”

“Not properly, no. The name’s Doctor Carmilla.” She stuck her hand out for him to shake, which he did without thinking, and she continued before he could respond, “And you’re Jonny Vangelis. Killed your father earlier tonight, about to do the same to yourself, am I correct?”

Jonny opened his mouth. Closed it. Longed for another bottle or a cigarette or both. “Yes.”

She sighed with something like disappointment. “I suppose you could waste your youth and talent over a little misfortune. Or you could live forever.”

He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke.”

“If I don’t want to see the sunrise, what makes you think I’d want immortality?” 

Doctor Carmilla sat beside him, looking out into the stars. “When you know your sunrises have no number–when you have a universe of suns to watch rise, to watch burn out-–it changes your perspective. You won’t care about  _ this _ anymore.” She gestured vaguely, but Jonny got the gist. “Besides; isn’t there someone who deserves that bullet a bit more?”

Jack. The bastard deserved to die, without a doubt, but… “You can’t seriously be implying that you could make me immortal.”

“Shoot me.” She looked him dead in the eyes. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Jonny had had a rather long and fucking exhausting day, and frankly, he’d shot people who were begging him not to by this point, so consent was all he really needed. There was already a bullet in the chamber, so all he had to do was raise the gun to her head and pull the trigger.

He wasn’t surprised when her brains were sprayed on the sand behind her, her face horribly disfigured, but he was a bit...disappointed? It was hard to say what he was feeling, but it made him laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and he was doubled over when he heard her voice again.

“Good, Jonny. You’re so obedient.”

Jonny fell back on his ass at that, and when he looked up at her he saw her face molding itself back together like some sick nightmare. “What the fuck?”

“I told you, Jonny, immortality. I won’t die anymore, and after you prove that you have what it takes, neither will you.”

He wasn’t sure what about the situation made him decide to go along for the ride, even in retrospect, but as he took her hand, he was sure this was all going to make for one hell of a story.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly have. a fairly elaborate timeline in my head for Jonny's backstory but I feel like it's probably better just to see snippets of it tbh
> 
> I hope you enjoyed! If this watered your crops, I'd love it if you watered mine with kudos/comments. Take care of yourself <3


End file.
